Yankees, Red Sox Series Is A Heavyweight Bout Made For 5 Rounds

If the Yankees come out and win Game 4, no one will remember the butt whipping the Red Sox dispensed in Game 3.

If the Yankees come out and win Game 4, no one will remember the butt whipping the Red Sox dispensed in Game 3.

The beauty of baseball is that momentum sways by pitch by pitch, not game by game. So the fact that the Yankees lost 16-1 to the Red Sox in Game 3 of the American League Division Series on Monday night doesn’t really mean too much as far as tonight’s game goes. This looked like an easy Dub for the Yankees when initially sizing up the pitching matchups.

Boston’s 16-1 win is the largest margin of victory in any @RedSox -@Yankees #postseason game ever. https://t.co/0fWSVeMVb5

Unfortunately, Yankees pitcher Luis Severino was the complete opposite of an ace, getting shelled for six earned runs in three innings of work. Hardly the Game 3 shutdown performance that the Yankees needed. Adding insult to injury, the Yankees record-breaking offense was stifled by Nathan Eovaldi, a former Yankee, and MLB journeyman.

It was just one of those games and thankfully, for the Yankees, it didn’t occur in a decisive ALDS Game 5. The Yankees can put this one behind them, come out tonight and even the series. Or Boston will continue its dominance from the regular season and roll into an ALCS battle with the defending World Series champion Houston Astros, who completed a 3-0 sweep of the Cleveland Indians on Monday.

Houston’s “Big Four” destroyed Indians pitching and are awaiting the winner of the Yankees and Red Sox.

Most informed baseball minds knew that the Boston-NY series would probably go five games, so how they get there doesn’t really matter. The proportion of any single game blowout is inconsequential as well.

Turn back the clock to 2004. The Yankees went up 3-0 on Boston in a best-of-seven ALCS series with a 19-8 drubbing. The magnitude of the loss made the prospects of a Yankees Boston rebounded to win four straight games, becoming the first team in history to do it.

JR Gamble joined The Shadow League in 2012. The Deputy Editor and Senior Writer is in his 23rd year of covering sports and culture professionally. He has covered a wide variety of major sports and entertainment topics across different mediums, including radio, magazines and national TV.

His passion is baseball, the culturing of baseball and preserving and documenting the historically-impactful accomplishments and contributions of African-Americans in baseball.